Class: MethodDictionary

• Inheritance
• Description
• Related information
• Class protocol
  • binary storage
  • instance creation
  • queries
• Instance protocol
  • accessing
  • binary storage
  • enumerating
  • inspecting
  • private
  • queries
  • removing

Inheritance:

   Object
   |
   +--Collection
      |
      +--KeyedCollection
         |
         +--MethodDictionary

Package:

stx:libbasic

Category:

Kernel-Methods

Version:

rev: 1.27 date: 2006/09/18 19:49:04

user: cg

file: MethodDictionary.st directory: libbasic

module: stx stc-classLibrary: libbasic

Author:

Stefan Vogel

Description:

Instances of MethodDictionary store selector/method associations
in classes. Conceptionally, they behave like IdentityDictionaries, but are
implemented using a single array (instead of Dictionary, which uses
two arrays to store keys and values separately).
Also, they do not use hashing, since due to caching in the VM, hashing
does not make too much of a difference in speed, but complicates the 
VM implementation.

Related information:

    Dictionary
    IdentityDictionary
    Behavior
    Class
    Method
    Symbol

Class protocol:

 binaryFullDefinitionFrom: stream manager: manager

 new: sz

create and return a new methodDictionary holding sz
key->value associations

 withAll: aDictionary

create a MethodDictionary from another Dictionary

 withKeys: keys andValues: values

create a MethodDictionary from a key (selector) array and value (method) array

 isBuiltInClass

this class is known by the run-time-system

Instance protocol:

 associationAt: key

return an association consisting of aKey and the element indexed
by aKey -
report an error, if no element is stored under aKey.

 at: key ifAbsent: exceptionBlock

return the element indexed by aKey -
return result of exceptionBlock if no element is stored under aKey

 at: key put: value

set the value for a given key, which is supposed to be a symbol.
In contrast to dictionaries, we allow adding elements only, if there is an
empty slot (nil key) present.

 at: key putOrAppend: value

set the value for a given key, which is supposed to be a symbol.
In contrast to dictionaries, we allow adding elements only, if there is an
empty slot (nil key) present.
Otherwise a new MethodDictionary is created & returned

 keyAtValue: value ifAbsent: exceptionBlock

return the first key with value -
return result of exceptionBlock if no key can be found

 storeFullBinaryDefinitionOn: stream manager: manager

store the complete description (i.e. including methods)

 collect: aBlock

for each element in the receiver, evaluate the argument, aBlock
and return a Bag with the results.

 keysAndValuesDo: aBlock

evaluate the 2 arg block aBlock for each key (i.e. each selector)
and each value (i.e. each method)

 inspectorClass

redefined to use DictionaryInspector
(instead of the default Inspector).

 compressed

compress - return either the myself or a new, compressed MethodDictionary

 size

return the number of elements (associations) in the receiver

 removeKey: key ifAbsent: failBlock

remove key from dictionary.
We actually do not remove it, but set it to nil.

 removeKeyAndCompress: key

remove key from dictionary.
A new, compressed MethodDictionary will be returned,
or nil, if key is not present.